as a vent, ain't there, Shorty?" he
said. "That's a gun in the hand of a man who's got plenty of nerve!"

CHAPTER XV

CONCERNING AN OUTLAW

Early in the afternoon of the first day of December the sky darkened,
and a cold, raw wind began to shriek through Willets. The company corral
was empty; and again, as on the day before Kane Lawler had visited him,
Gary Warden stood at one of the windows of his office smiling. Warden
was almost satisfied.

Only one disturbing thought persistently recurred; Lawler had got his
cattle through to Red Rock.

A crimson stain appeared in Warden's cheeks as his thoughts reverted to
Lawler's return to Willets, after disposing of his cattle to the Red
Rock buyer. And Warden's shoulders sagged a little, the smile faded and
he glared malignantly at the bleak, gray clouds that sailed over town on
the chill, bitter wind.

Oddly, at the instant Warden's memory was dwelling upon the incident of
Lawler's return to Willets, Lafe Corwin, the storekeeper, was mentally
reviewing the incident.

Willets was a cow-town, and for the winter its activity was over. All
the beef cattle in the section, with the exception of three thousand
head still held by Lawler, at the Circle L, had been shipped eastward,
and Willets would now descend to supine indifference to considerations
of gain.

Lafe Corwin was tilted back in a big wooden chair near the big,
roaring-hot stove in the lounging-room of the Willets Hotel. His clerk
could attend to the store. Until spring came, Corwin would spend much of
his leisure near the big stove in the hotel, talking politics and
cattle--two subjects of paramount importance.

But just at this instant Corwin was thinking of Lawler's return to
Willets. Little wrinkles gathered around his eyes--which were twinkling;
and he chuckled lowly as his gaze roved from one to the other of the men
who, like himself, were enjoying the warmth of the stove and listening,
between words, to the howling and moaning of the wind.

Three or four times, during silences, Corwin chuckled. And when at last
he saw Dave Rankin, the blacksmith, watching him curiously, he guffawed
aloud, rubbing his hands gleefully.

"I don't reckon I ever seen no mournfuller sight than that!" he
declared.

"Meanin' which?" asked the blacksmith, his eyes alight with truculent
inquiry. The others sat erect, attentive.

"Meanin' that mornin' when Kane Lawler hopped off the train with his
bunch of cowhands--a